Labor Day (Part 2)

Sunday morning we woke up, packed up camp, and headed to Yellowstone.  Once you get into the park, you have the option to either head North or South.  Lucky for us, they were doing construction and had the northbound road closed which meant extra-heavy traffic.   Want to see who caused it?

There was a several mile long backup because everyone driving by had to take pictures of the elk.  I know most of these people have never seen anything like it before, but it gets kind of frustrating dealing with traffic jams because of things we regularly get to see. 

We stopped at most of the walkways that show you the geological features so Jim could see what they were like.  Plus, we hadn't been there ourselves for over 10 years.  Pat and Jim both took lots of photos.

And we got a very nice foreign gentleman to get one of all of us.

After several hours we finally made it to Old Faithful, which was Jim's only required stop for the trip.  We waited around for a while to see the geyser, while people watching.  There sure were plently of people to choose from.

After Old Faithful went off we went for a little walk just to give the parking lot a chance to clear out.  It was sad how commercialized everything seemed to be compared to when we went as kids.  We finally decided we had better hit the road if we were going to find a spot to camp for the night.  We made another stop at the last walkway before you leave the park, and I'm glad we did.  I think it was my favorite because they were right on the shore (or in) Yellowstone Lake. 

The weather was looking a bit dark, so we got back on the road.  We made one more stop before we got out of the park to walk up to a waterfall overlook.  It was raining a little when we left the Jeep, but by the time we got up the (very short) trail it was hailing/snowing like crazy so we ran back to the Jeep again.

We finally made it out of Yellowstone and into Grand Teton National Park where we found a spot to camp for the night.